Ibn Taymiyya's Argument and Its Modern Consequences

Salafi and Wahhabi teaching holds that seeking intercession at a tomb, praying to a deceased holy figure, asking favors of them or travelling specifically to visit their grave for that purpose, directs to a creature what belongs to God alone, and treats the practice as falling under shirk, the gravest prohibition in Islamic theology, rather than as a lesser irregularity to be discouraged but tolerated. Ibn Taymiyya, whose fourteenth century arguments against travelling to graves for intercession and against building structures over them are foundational to this position, held that such practices, however sincerely intended, compromise the exclusive claim God alone has on worship and petition, since only God can answer a prayer or grant a request, and directing either to the dead treats a creature as though it possessed a power that belongs to the creator alone. The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia records that this argument became a defining commitment of the movement founded in eighteenth century Najd by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, with material consequences that have continued into the present: shrines and domed tombs have been demolished in several countries over the last two centuries, most systematically and most recently in the Arabian peninsula itself, where the movement has held religious and political authority.